There are many industries that package a product into a small flanged container. The containers are placed into packing cartons by various means. Collation is defined as the overlapping of adjacent flanges of a plurality of flanged containers. There are existing collating devices for flanged containers, however, they are slow and generally inefficient. The most common means for filling a packing carton with containers is by hand which is inefficient, unreliable and expensive. Uncollated flanged containers require a larger packing carton than would be required if the flanged containers were collated. The larger cartons are more expensive and add to the cost of the packaged product. There is a need for a device that can efficiently collate flanged containers at a high speed and position the collated containers into a packing carton. The collated packages require a substantially smaller packing carton than would be required if the containers were uncollated.
A substantial savings in time and thus money can be achieved if collation could be achieved at a speed of several thousand per minute in lieu of the present rate of less than one hundred twenty per minute. This savings of time and hence money reduces the direct cost of packing flanged containers into a packing carton, resulting in a higher profit.
I am not aware of any apparatus or other means that can efficiently pick up a plurality of flanged containers in a preset configuration on a carrier line, collate said containers and then position them in a packing carton at a rate of several thousand per minute. The existing methods for collating flanged containers and positioning them into a packing carton are inefficient, time consuming and expensive.
My collating apparatus will efficiently and effectively take a plurality of flanged containers from a processing or carrier line and position them in a carton so as to enable the minimum size carton to be used for a maximum number of containers at a rate of several thousand per minute. In so doing, a substantial savings will result in labor and material costs.